Background
Judy Davis was born on 23 April 1955 in Perth, Australia.
Judy Davis was born on 23 April 1955 in Perth, Australia.
She attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and, apparently, left a convent school to sing rock and roll: liturgy and abandon have shaped her.
It is a career of moments and scenes and of films that killed her off or hardly had the nerve to run with her: High Rolling (77, Igor Auzins); My Brilliant Career (79, Gillian Armstrong); Heatwave (81, Phillip Noyce); The Winter of Our Dreams (81, John Duigan); The Final Option (82. Ian Sharp); rather neglected as Miss Quested in A Passage to India (84, David Lean), but nominated for best actress; Kangaroo (86, Tim Burstall), with her husband, Colin Friels, playing versions of D. II. Lawrence and Frieda; High Tide (87, Armstrong); Alice (90, Woody Allen); as George Sand in Impromptu (91, James Lapine); Where Angels Fear to Tread (91, Charles Sturridge); as a Southern ghostwriter in Barton Fink (91, Joel and Ethan Coen); fighting the Nazis on TV in One Against the Wind (91, Larry Elikann), where she resembles Vivien Leigh; Naked Lunch (92, David Cronenberg); Shadows and Fog (92, Allen); nominated for supporting actress in Husbands and Wives (92, Allen), in which she has some spot-on Bette Davis scenes; The Pwf (94, Ted Demme).
The difficulty in casting, or exercising her fully, began to show: she had small roles and wayward films, and more and more TV. Yet she continues to triumph, one of the few unmissable actresses of our time: The New Age (94, Michael Tolkin); very good in Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (95, Jeff Bleckner); brilliant in Children of the Revolution (96, Peter Duncan); horribly abused in Blood 6- Wine (96, Bob Rafel- son); Deconstructing Harry (97, Allen); regarded as a bitch in Absolute Power (97, Clint Eastwood); Celebrity (98, Allen); as Ms. Heilman, opposite Sam Shepard, in Dash and Lilly (99, Kathy Bates); Gaudi Afternoon (01. Susan Seidelman). But her difficulties were compensated for by her inspired Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (01, Robert Allan Ackerman).
If a woman with an opinion in Hollywood is considered hazardous then Australian Judy Davis could easily qualify as one of the most dangerous female. The petite, pale redhead, whose slash of red or brown lipstick has almost become her trademark, is considered one of the finest actresses of contemporary cinema and has garnered a reputation for her passion, high artistic standards and frank speech.
Not many actresses these davs have such a rich line of gruffness, intelligence, and superiority; none can give such rapid hints of the perverse or the eccentric; and no one has ever been so unabashedly freckled and scrawny, without losing an atom of appeal. It will take brave ventures to cast Judy Davis. She does not seem interested in having the love of the people. But there is a cult following her, and it thrills to stories from Australia that she is an outstanding stage actress. Imagine her Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, Mother Courage, and Tracy Lord (she does have a Hepburnish brusqueness).
Not unlike Bette Davis in the 1930s and 40s, Judy Davis was not one to suffer fools and had no trouble expressing her feelings. To her, the work was paramount and she consistently delivered superb performances whether acting on stage, screen or television. Davis later admitted she had difficulties with the neurotic character and occasionally clashed with director Gillian Armstrong, but her performance was undeniably forceful and earned her numerous accolades including Best Actress citations from the British Film Academy and the Australian Film Institute.